Couple of minor glitches with Favoriting.

October 26, 2006 2:37 PM

Couple of minor glitches with Favoriting. [MI]
posted by It's Raining Florence Henderson to Bugs at 2:37 PM (15 comments total)

1) Several times over the last month or so, people have favorited comments of mine that were never added to my savedfavorites page, even though the counter/link was incremented on my user page, and later favorited comments were added (in other words, the page has been both refreshed and updated, but the missing comments were still never added). These are not from deleted comments or deleted favorites – if I go to the comments, they still exist and show that they have been favorited. I can look up the specific examples if needed, but I’m not so much concerned about getting my own page updated as I am with reporting the behavior in case there’s a larger issue. At first, I assumed it was a caching lag; but when other updates were made without also adding the missing comments, it seemed strange, especially since it has happened several times, and only recently.

2) I was naughty and made a joke comment in an AskMe thread. It was, as expected, deleted. Before it was deleted, however, it was favorited. Despite the deletion, it still shows up as a favorited comment on my savedfavorites page, which I think is fine, because it means I still have a copy of at least some of what I wrote. Clicking the link just goes to the top of the thread in question, which is the expected behavior. This lead me to wonder, though, about what would be the best way to handle this from the perspective of users who favorite deleted comments? Is it fine to have misleading ghost links to missing comments on Favorites pages, or would it be preferable (though possibly confusing) to remove those links when the comments are removed? Or possibly to flag the link somehow as expired or deleted? This is a minor usability question, not a big deal, and I don’t even know how technically feasible it would be even if anybody else cares; but I thought I’d mention it while I was on the subject.
posted by It's Raining Florence Henderson at 2:37 PM on October 26, 2006

1) if you can give me actual examples with URLs, I can troubleshoot it. Without that, I really don't have much to go on.

2) I will filter the saved favorites page so that deleted stuff no longer shows up there, though the counts will be off because it's a pain in the ass to do a lookup on 200+ favorites and make sure each and every one of them is public.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 2:44 PM on October 26, 2006

Thanks - I'll have the examples for you shortly.
posted by It's Raining Florence Henderson at 2:46 PM on October 26, 2006

Couple more points about savedfavorites:
3) If you go to www.metafilter.com/savedfavorites the URL is transformed to http://www.metafilter.com/savedfavorites/?user_ID=C:/metafilter%20sites/www.metafilter.com/savedfavorites. I don't know about the inner workings of Mefi code, but the server's filesystem path being in the querystring may open up opportunities for hackery.
4) If you go to my savedfavorites, for example, it says "Displaying 1 through 13 posts" which is a bit misleading, since it's displaying 3 posts which have been favorited a total of 13 times. Something like "3 of your posts have been favorited a total of 13 times" may make more sense.
posted by matthewr at 2:51 PM on October 26, 2006

These are the two most recent ones. There's at least one older one, too. I'll see if I can find it.

http://www.metafilter.com/mefi/55756#1472596
http://www.metafilter.com/mefi/55648#1467590
posted by It's Raining Florence Henderson at 2:53 PM on October 26, 2006

Sorry: http://www.metafilter.com/mefi/55756#1472596
http://www.metafilter.com/mefi/55648#1467590
posted by It's Raining Florence Henderson at 2:54 PM on October 26, 2006

'Nother one:
5) If you go to IRFH's second page of savedfavorites, it says "Displaying 31 through 2 posts". D'oh!
posted by matthewr at 2:57 PM on October 26, 2006

Another missing one: http://www.metafilter.com/mefi/55330#1455689
posted by It's Raining Florence Henderson at 3:01 PM on October 26, 2006

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO don't delete favorite comments from Favorite Pages! I love having a record of them! Please please please please PLEASE don't change this funny glitch.

::glares at IRFH::
posted by ThePinkSuperhero at 4:38 PM on October 26, 2006 [1 favorite]

And as long as we're talking about Favorites, I'd still love to be able to remove Favorites from the Favorites tab.
posted by ThePinkSuperhero at 4:38 PM on October 26, 2006 [1 favorite]

Thanks IRFH, deleted ones are gone now. I can't tell why your favorited comments from the past few days aren't showing up though. I'll keep working on that.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 5:03 PM on October 26, 2006

Thanks. I just figured if it was happening to me, it was probably happening to others, as well. The only other thing I can think of that might be relevant is that each of those comments was favorited on a day when I also had some other comment favorited later. So depending on how you handle/trigger caching/updating for that page... If the site happened to go down between updates... I don't know - just thinking "out loud."

sorry TPS
*hangs head*
posted by It's Raining Florence Henderson at 5:14 PM on October 26, 2006

I still love you.
posted by ThePinkSuperhero at 5:28 PM on October 26, 2006 [1 favorite]

Okay - that just made my day.
posted by It's Raining Florence Henderson at 5:29 PM on October 26, 2006

Hi Matt: I've been having an ongoing problem with saved favorites as well that might be related to Flo's problem.
posted by Fuzzy Monster at 9:47 AM on October 27, 2006